OPINION: Pre-primary rollout further strains school system that can’t cope with special needs

Just as inclusion is an issue in P-12, it will be an issue for pre-primary, says Allison Garber. (CONTRIBUTED)

Editor’s note: Below are excerpted remarks made on Oct. 4 by Allison Garber, mother of an eight-year-old child with Autism Spectrum Disorder, before the provincial Law Amendments Committee in response to Bill No. 8, Pre-primary Education Act (amended).

I appreciate the opportunity to present my experience as a parent of a child on the autism spectrum, in terms of navigating the public education system.

My son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at age four. Our lives changed that day, dramatically.

Almost immediately, our roles as parents were now to include the role of advocate. This advocacy started with working to increase funding for our province’s Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention Program (EIBI) and has now extended into advocating for greater inclusion supports within our public education system.

Following the very heated and emotional labour dispute (between public-school teachers and the government last year), our family, like hundreds of others across the province, were encouraged by government’s creation of the Committee on Classroom Conditions and the Commission on Inclusive Education. Encouraged, yet also understandably feeling vulnerable and afraid of the varied opinions we knew this discussion would bring forward.

In fact, we had already heard many of these judgments during the labour dispute. Our children were a distraction in the classroom. They kept the “other” kids behind. They were a parent’s responsibility, not the taxpayers’.

These attitudes were, and are, discriminatory. After all, who has the authority to determine that one child has more of a claim to an education over another?

Education is a fundamental human right.

The actions of the government to agree with the teachers that our current inclusion model isn’t working, that we need to do better, and to enact the Commission on Inclusive Education provided me with great faith. At the time, I gave full credit to Premier Stephen McNeil, and the previous minister of Education, the Honourable Karen Casey, for having the political courage to put inclusion on the table for a thorough examination.

But then, out of seemingly nowhere, came the decision to implement pre-primary, just a mere month before the start of the school year, before any meaningful consultation had taken place, at the cost of $50 million and rising.

It was frankly bewildering. Had we not, through the creation of the Committee on Classroom Conditions and the Inclusion Commission, recognized that our P-12 education system was in crisis and that a comprehensive strategy needed to be developed, budgeted for and executed in order to remedy the systematic issues at play?

Our provincial government argues that introducing pre-primary will provide a better start for our province’s four-year-olds. They argue that, in fact, this will allow developmental disabilities to be caught earlier — that overall our kids will be better prepared to go into Grade Primary.

I’m not here to disagree, actually. I don’t argue that a pre-primary program has exceptional merit, and that many of our provincial communities could greatly benefit.

Why now, though?

One of the leads on the Commission for Inclusive Education readily acknowledged that their recommendations won’t be for minor changes to be made to the inclusion model. Rather, their recommendations will require a major upheaval and restructuring that will require a significant investment.

Would it not be prudent and fiscally wise for the government to await those recommendations and the associated costs before expanding our education system?

This isn’t to mean that pre-primary had to take a perpetual backseat; in fact, the planning for pre-primary starting with comprehensive consultation with direct stakeholders such as early childhood educators and private daycares – as well as disability communities that could advise on inclusion supports for younger children – could have had the time it required.

Because, just as inclusion is an issue in P-12, inclusion will – mark my words – be an issue for pre-primary. The deputy minister of Education acknowledged recently in Public Accounts that we did not have sufficient teaching assistant supports for students within the P-12 system, so how are we going to magically make this happen for much younger students?

This is a serious question of safety.

Last week, my son – who is an assessed flight risk – went missing at his school after being left alone in the learning centre. This was not the first time this occurred, but thankfully, this time he didn’t make it out of the school.

He’s not alone; recently, I learned the terrifying story of a Grade Primary student on the autism spectrum who fled school only to be found a good while later on a nearby highway walking the centre yellow line. Lines, you see, are a great point of interest for that little boy.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend tonight was to dispute the gross misrepresentation of the issues being raised about pre-primary – suggesting that if you have legitimate concerns about the timing of pre-primary, you are completely opposed to the idea of early education.

In the recent House debate on pre-primary, a government member took the floor and essentially attacked anyone who would question the implementation of a pre-primary program. He stated, “I would like to have that question answered because that's truly the question that we’re here facing today — wait, wait, wait. Wait for what? Another 850 kids to miss this opportunity?”

I’d like to answer that question for that member today.

No. I don’t want 850 children to miss an opportunity. I also don’t want one single child to meet a tragic fate. And until we can look ourselves in the mirror and say we’ve done all we can do to keep our schools safe and provide accommodations to all of our learners, I would argue that the reasonable, the responsible, the right thing to do, would be to wait.

Upon first learning about the introduction of a pre-primary program, I used the metaphor that introducing pre-primary at this point in time was akin to renovating your house while the roof was on fire.

I was struck when the minister of Education referred to it in the debate on pre-primary in the legislature.

The minister stated, “If we are to accept the analogy of our education system being a home and being on fire … I would argue, in fact, that early learning is the foundation of our education system.”

I sat with this for a while, unsure as to why it bothered me so much.

Just as an introduction doesn’t provide the context for a book, pre-primary can’t serve as the underpinning of an entire education system.

Edmund Burke, an Irish statesman and political theorist, is remembered as saying, “Good order is the foundation of all good things.”

The order within our overarching education system is established by the choices we make, and those choices directly impact the fate of each and every one of our student learners.

And this government made a choice to invest over $50 million into onboarding four-year-old Nova Scotians into a system that is irrevocably broken.

In response to the commission’s initial recommendations, Education Minister Zach Churchill said he has “full confidence” that the provincial government will “find the money” to implement the final report’s recommendations.

I think I speak for many families this evening in saying that I hope this will be true. However, the introduction of pre-primary before we had solved the existing issues in P-12 makes these words seem hollow.

You can suggest that one choice doesn’t impact the other, but this is a government that has led with austerity. The choice to invest such a significant amount of money was made over investing in other areas.

We know this to be true because lining the shelves of government offices are multiple reports whose recommendations have yet to be fully acted upon.

-Minister’s Review of Services for Students with Special Needs, delivered in 2007;

-And the first, and only, report card on the action plan issued in 2012 (a report card that was supposed to be annual by the way); and

-Choosing Now, Investing in Nova Scotians Living with Autism, delivered to government in 2016.

No family wants to put private information into the public forum; it is literally the last resort. It’s the choice you make when you are staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., realizing that the days, months and years are passing quickly and these fleeting moments also take bit by bit the potential you see so clearly in your child. So you fight. You fight for the child who depends on you and your ability to provide for him.

I worry often that our family’s advocacy paints a dismal picture of the reality of living with a child who has a disability. I’d like to take the opportunity to set that straight.

We are not fighting because our son’s life is a burden on us; it’s the opposite. We’re fighting because we have so much optimism and hope.

Shortly after my son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, I was speaking with a good friend whose son has Down syndrome. The words she shared with me that day have stayed with me ever since, and have since come to fruition.

She told me, “This will be the greatest thing ever to happen to your family. An entire world will open up to you. You will see the absolute beauty in the diversity a different neurology can bring.”

I do. We do. And we have made it our life’s mission to make others around my son realize and appreciate that, too.

On the cover of the Autism Management Advisory Team Report was another quote, this one by Adolphe Monod, French Protestant churchman from the 1800s, and it is one I will leave you with.

“Between the great things we cannot do, and the small things we will not do, the danger is we shall do nothing.”

I know that my family’s story will not force the halt of implementing pre-primary; rather my story, and the stories of the other families, should serve as advance notice that when the Commission on Inclusive Education releases its report in the coming months, we will not allow “do nothing” to be an option.